Accessibility and Access Keys [0]
Environmentalists contend that NAFTA’s pollution watchdog is sitting on a report critical of the Canadian government for failing to take action over massive amounts of PCBs seeping into the St. Lawrence River at part of Montreal’s former Expo ‘67 site.
The watchdog, the Commission for Environmental Co-operation, has completed an investigation intended to either prove or disprove the embarrassing claim that the Canadian government isn’t bothering to protect aquatic life from one of the world’s most feared hazardous chemicals, a transformer fluid linked to cancer.
But the report on the outcome of the investigation is sitting on the Montreal desk of Adrián Vázquez-Gálvez, executive director of the organization set up to monitor pollution for Mexico, Canada and the United States under the free-trade agreement.
Scott Edwards, senior attorney with the Waterkeeper Alliance, one of the groups that made the PCB allegation, says the investigation is being held up because of worries about offending the Canadians, who have complained about past probes concluding that the government has failed to enforce environmental laws.
“This executive director was told that that wasn’t to happen again,” Mr. Edwards said. “It was strongly suggested to him by the Canadian [government].”
Garry Keller, a spokesman for Environment Minister John Baird, denied that the government has taken steps to interfere with the PCB investigation.
But the concern over Canadian interference is arising because Mr. Vázquez-Gálvez, a former Mexican government bureaucrat, was told last year by a top Environment Canada official, assistant deputy minister David McGovern, to tread carefully when it came to future investigations of Canada.
In a letter he sent to Mr. Vázquez-Gálvez in December, the Canadian official was extremely critical of a CEC investigation that concluded the federal government failed to enforce wildlife protection laws in the Ontario logging industry, leading to the deaths of thousands of migratory birds.
The results of that probe were released in February, but Mr. McGovern complained that the CEC investigation had included too much detailed information on Ontario’s logging practices. He wanted future probes – which are called “factual records” by the CEC – to take positions more in tune with the federal government’s views, according to the letter, a copy of which has been reviewed by The Globe and Mail.
“I wish to draw your attention to the point that the integrity of the citizen submission process, and its ultimate success, rests on the confidence it garners not only with submitters, but also with the parties,” he said, referring to the three NAFTA governments.
The inquiry into PCBs oozing into the St. Lawrence is the first since then.
More than four years ago, environmentalists complained to the CEC, alleging the Canadian government was failing to take action over the PCBs. Some of the excess PCB readings were eye-popping, with the worst 941,000 times the federal guideline for fish protection.
The CEC is an unusual guard dog: It can bark but not bite. It has no enforcement powers to stop pollution, but can issue negative publicity about the environmental failings of the three North American governments, and hope bad press pushes politicians to act.
Now, it appears that even the power of issuing rebukes to governments about their environmental failures is becoming sensitive for the Montreal-based CEC.
The commission, which is supposed to be independent of governments and was set up to allay environmentalists’ concerns about free trade, wants to send the PCB results to an outside review rather than fast-tracking them for release.
CEC spokesman Jeffrey Stoub said Mr. Vázquez-Gálvez has the results of the investigation “in his hands” and has asked to have them peer-reviewed. Mr. Stoub said he didn’t know if previous factual records done by the CEC had been subjected to a process normally associated with fact-checking at scientific journals and said the move would delay the release.
“You could take that how you think best,” he said, when asked if the peer review was prompted by worries about the reaction of the government.
Those familiar with the CEC say the action is unprecedented, and leads to questions about the organization’s independence.
“I’m not aware that a factual record has ever been sent out for a peer review,” said Stewart Elgie, an environmental law professor at the University of Ottawa. “Doing so would likely be inconsistent with the NAFTA environmental agreement, which assumes a certain degree of independence for factual records.”
Mr. Elgie previously served on a federal advisory group about the CEC.
Mr. Edwards said the CEC isn’t only dealing with pressure from Canada. He said the U.S. doesn’t want the agency to investigate claims about mercury pollution from its coal-fired power plants.
The Waterkeeper Alliance is a conservation group based in Irvington, N.Y., that specializes in water pollution prevention. It was one of five Canadian and U.S. organizations that asked for the investigation. The site leaking PCBs was used as an Expo parking lot, but had previously been a waste dump. It is now a business area called Technoparc.